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Tag Archives: Philip Hammond

Why the chancellor’s statement could imperil UK climate ambitions

Posted on 7 June, 2019 by Green Alliance blog Leave a comment

This post is by Dimitri Zenghelis, senior visiting fellow at the Grantham Research Institute at LSE and Green Alliance associate. It was first posted on LSE’s Grantham Institute blog.

Chancellor Philip Hammond’s assertion that the cost of transitioning to a net zero carbon economy in the UK will exceed a trillion pounds by 2050, made in a letter to Prime Minister Theresa May on Wednesday, is simply incorrect. The evidence for this is set out clearly and in detail in the Report of the Advisory Group on Costs and Benefits of Net Zero for the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), which was drafted by a panel of experts including a senior economist from Shell International and the chief economist of the Confederation of British Industry. Read more

Three things the Industrial Strategy should now do to raise productivity

Posted on 28 November, 2017 by Angela Francis Leave a comment

George Osborne gave Philip Hammond what is known in sport as a hospital pass: an economic plan based on the UK returning to pre-2008 productivity growth of two per cent per annum without the investment or strategy to make it happen. The Office of Budget Responsibility’s figures show we actually got paltry productivity growth of 0.2 per cent growth in 2016 and the forecast for 2017 is 0.0 per cent. Read more

What the government’s carbon plan should mean for the built environment

Posted on 22 November, 2016 by Green Alliance blog Leave a comment

This post is by Julie Hirigoyen, chief executive of the UK Green Buildings Council (UK-GBC).

Buildings are responsible for around a third of our greenhouse gas emissions, and have by far the most potential for achieving cost effective greenhouse gas reductions compared to other sectors.

Is the US outclassing the UK on climate statesmanship?

Posted on 24 October, 2014 by Amy Mount Leave a comment

Al Gore is the famous what-if of US climate politics, given the controversial near miss that was the presidential election of 2000, combined with his subsequent activism. His film, ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, won two Academy Awards, and the man himself won a share of the Nobel Peace Prize (along with the IPCC) for his efforts to wake the world up to climate change.

But current Secretary of State John Kerry, the second contender to lose a presidential election to George W Bush, has started to nudge Gore out of the climate action spotlight. Read more